God Speaks

Gerhard Marx has been on a thirty-year plus journey with orality. With passion and enthusiasm, he tells the story of how God led him into orality via prayer and radio. But having been deeply influenced by the Hebrew Bible (what most of us know as the Old Testament), Gerhard also discusses how critical an understanding of performance and emotion are for truly grasping the orally-rich nature of the...

This episode of God Speaks features a dear friend of the Orality Movement—Cameron Armstrong.  With a rich history of serving in Romania and the Philippines, Cameron now leads an Orality Studies program based out of Manila. With a heart for honouring local peoples and learning how to listen and serve with them, Cameron offers insights from his own journey as he shares how God has led him into a gre...

Mark Overstreet is a newly appointed Lausanne catalyst for orality. He has decades of experience in oral-based initiatives all across the globe, yet he carries the local church in his heart. Join us for a conversation with Mark wherein we get to learn about some of his journey into orality and why he continues to believe orality is critical for the global Body of Christ. 

In our latest conversation on Orality and the Gospel, we speak with Karlena de la Cruz from StoryRunners (Cru) about the vision God has given them: to see followers of Christ in communities of faith among every oral, unreached people group. Join us as we explore how to love our oral-reliant (and oral-preferenced) neighbors—some of whom may live much closer than you realize.

" We have made an assumption in the North American Church that because we are in church, we are reading the Bible. And we are not. We are biblically illiterate. We don't know what the Bible says; we know what the preacher says. "  In this conversation with special guest Tara Rye, we discuss how God disrupted her biblical training, experience and expectations to introduce her to the...

ION hosted a recent online forum that explored the intersection of orality, technology and discipleship. We have edited the discussion and made it available as a means to encourage but also stimulate fresh thoughts on the overlap of these critical streams. We hope you enjoy.

Join us and guest speaker Jyoti for a conversation on the power of story, and how it relates to the use of our imaginations in personalizing and deeply engaging with Gospel. Jyoti draws on his experience as a narrative entrepreneur in both fantasy fiction and the business sector to discuss practical tips on storytelling such as different types of stories as well as different preconceived ideas of...

In this conversation, our friends Ella and Kayla share about how God has invited them to use oral communication strategies in their spheres of influence. For Ella, she is training leaders all over the world in orality. For her daughter Kayla, it means using oral tools to engage her community as a law student in Southeast Asia. Join us as we learn more of the power of orality within family and beyo...

Has Orality impacted your life and ministry?  We love testimonies like that.  Join us for the next episode of God Speaks as we hear YWAMer Youngshin  shares how God directed her steps into orality, oral Bible translation and finally to Jerusalem as part of a larger Kingdom strategy to impact oral Bible translation teams around the globe.

"Any one thirst? Come."  In this episode of God Speaks, Michael J. Mantle and Jonathan Wiles of Living Water International discuss how orality has impacted not only their lives but also the cultural ethos of their entire org. In the missions world today, we need more of such forerunners.  Websites mentioned during the episode: https://water.cc https://water.cc/church http://flourish.guid...

God Speaks is excited to welcome Charles Madinger and Daniel Goerzen from the Institute of Orality Strategies (iOS)  as they  introduce a significant new orality initiative that seeks to address a familiar question: "What makes oral-reliant people oral-reliant?" Related links: https://gomap.pro https://gomap.pro/survey/ https://i-os.org/training/

This week we are excited to have Dr. Grant Lovejoy joining us for the God Speaks Webinar.  Dr. Lovejoy is the Director of Orality Strategies for IMB and brings his wealth of experience and expertise to discuss the hot topic of Orality in Urban Contexts. 

We are excited to host Samuel Chiang , the former CEO of the International Orality Network (ION) and of the Seed Company. Samuel current serves as the Deputy Secretary General of Ministries for the World Evangelical Alliance and brings a wealth of experience and wisdom to our next episode of God Speaks. But, even more, Samuel hungers for God.  Join us as we discuss with Samuel the role of orality...

We are delighted to welcome Laura Cooke to the next edition of God Speaks. Laura is the founder and creator of 7SONG: The Bible in Song. 7SONG tells the entire story of the Gospel in seven songs, and is being translated and sung by indigenous singers to share the message of Jesus with people in their heart language. Having traveled extensively, Laura ‘s passion is to use music to tell stories that...

Orality and Multicultural Teams We are excited to welcome you to the next episode of God Speaks. Dr. Don Moon will be joining us. Don (PhD, Biola) brings thirty-plus years of experience, leadership, and teaching to our discussion of orality and cross-cultural teams. We are excited to welcome him to the God Speaks webinar as we discuss this critical issue in contemporary missions and specifically d...

Re-Imagining Bible Translation Through YWAM and Orality: An Interview From The Ground-level  In this last year, Vikki Wright and the YWAM Arua (Uganda) team have followed the Holy Spirit into the whole new world of Oral Bible Translation (OBT).  They have already experienced God do some tremendous things and Vikki will be joining us to share in more detail how YWAM is trying to faithfully and oral...

Orality and Theological Education in the Majority World Context: Addressing the Oral Oversight God is raising up theologically astute Majority World leaders who care about equipping their leaders with appropriate tools to engage the oral-reliant communicators in their communities. One of those thought-leaders is Dr. Ezekiel Ajibade , senior lecturer at Nigheria Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Aj...

In their book, A Return to Oral Hermeneutics, Steffen and Bjoraker reengaged us in a vital discussion for today both in terms of missions as well as better Bible understanding for all of us. Ray Neu has learned some of the more practical and pragmatic aspects of doing Oral Hermeneutics in an African context. In the next several episodes, Ray will help us examine what the Bible itself says about in...

This month, we will continue our experiential learning together as we explore how God shapes different people's character in the Bible through various life experiences. Specifically, we will examine the intersections God offered to people and how they responded to those opportunities and the choices they made. Such investigations will contribute to developing arobust oral character study. Dr....

We are excited to have Dr. Ray Neu with us again this month on our God Speaks webinar/podcast. He will be modeling for us how to apply contextualized, oral hermeneutics to a biblical passage. This episode promises to be engaging and practical. We welcome you to join us as we seek to better communicate God's Word today.

Want to reach the world for Jesus? Most of the world's population is oral-preferenced. That means we need to incorporate orality into all of our mission strategies. But how do we do that? We begin with prayer.  Join us for this next episode of God Speaks: Conversations on Orality and the Gospel as we explore the relationship between orality and prayer even as we PRAY together for the world&ap...

In this episode of God Speaks we explore the connections between orality and advent. Rather than being a presentation, this episode features a brief story performance and a discussion on how Jesus' incarnation impacts all of our communication.

Embodying the Spoken & Artistic Word With Special Guest: Roce Anog-Madinger: Jesus shared stories. We know that. But Jesus must have also listened to the people’s stories for 30 years before he started teaching using parables, symbols, or metaphors. Roce will be sharing how the arts helped her listen to people’s hearts by ‘listening’ to their arts. Together with her husband Chuck, they head th...

Episode 9 - Orality and Real Life Relationships: Putting Theory Into Practice Having been involved in Christian ministry since a teenager, Jim is dedicated to making God look good, Jesus well known and Christians well trained. For that reason his dedication to the Lord targets ministries emphasizing the practical. Orality fits nicely into that niche. He has been trained in two storytelling ministr...

In this episode, we explore the questions that have shaped much of our traditional engagement approaches to Scripture. Dr. Tom Steffen and Dr. Bill Bjoraker will help us discover how oral hermeneutics invites us to reconsider our key questions as we seek to understand and communicate biblical message.